How Justified is the Hysteria Around 3D Printing?

Many including The Economist tout Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D Printing, as the Third Industrial Revolution because it promises to create groundbreaking technical, social, and economic changes. Skeptics will of course point to the technology’s multiple limitations.

Reality is always somewhere between the extremes. Technical, intellectual property (IP), and practical considerations have limited AM’s market penetration to 1-5% (2013). Even the technicians who almost completely printed a car at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show believed AM will not take over automotive production in the near future.

But then, AM has already demonstrated its near-infinite capacity in the prototype segment. And it is making its presence felt in final production in the consumer goods, aerospace, medical, automotive, dental, and construction industries. Sooner, not later, it will deliver on its promise.

Subtle Challenges

Currently, there are only 2,000 AM machines in the world, nothing compared to hundreds of thousands of conventional manufacturing machines. McKinsey Global Institute estimates 3D Printing to hit $550billion by 2025, a far cry from what manufacturing was globally worth in 2012, a staggering $11.5trillion a year.

Intellectual Property: protection has always been strong in the AM industry despite recent momentum gathered by the open-source movement

Patents incentivize innovation but have obstructed innovation in 3D Printing. Here, ideas flow fast and the typical 20 year patent duration is too long to support rapid innovation

3D Printers employing the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) procedure cannot install a build chamber in their machines because Stratasys (a leading AM company) has patented the same. IP laws in the U.S. are way behind fast-paced developments in AM

Cost: While some printers are available at $500, the really useful ones come at around $50,000. Metal powders cost $150/kg. High-end Ti 6-4 powder costs $600/kg. AM currently consumes 50-100 times or even more power than conventional processes

Tolerances: some AM-made parts are not as accurate as those made by conventional precision machining and require finish machining

Absence of Industry-Wide Quality Standards: because the industry is young. Also, quality checks are complicated. How can you check the quality of each deposited level?

Shortage of Skilled Operators: plagues the entire U.S. manufacturing industry and is more pronounced in 3D Printing. Technical school graduates know little or nothing of AM and operators learn most skills o

Most 3D Printing users believe in sharing designs openly. This, more than anything else, may propel high-end 3D Printing beyond the threshold of affordability and make it a technology for the masses as laws and regulations catch up.

The story of General Electric’s (GE’s) jet fuel nozzles manifest all facets of AM. Being the first metal parts made via AM at the production level, they created waves. GE invested millions and over a decade in developing these. GE also spent considerable time and effort in setting quality standards because there are none at the industry level. Why?

Because, the nozzles will eventually save $1.5billion in fuel costs over the airplane’s lifecycle for GE’s customers. The nozzles last five times longer, are lighter, and more reliable. The bottom line: If not directly, AM offers benefits somewhere else in the value chain.